The Muse

"Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy."

I have always imagined the Muses as a source of inspiration; the spirit from which the story comes from, but somehow, I didn't make the connection that the Muse is not only the source of the story, but also the speaker who tells it. "Speak through me. . ." When Prof. Sexton mentioned the fact in class today, it was a simultaneous "aha" and "no duh" moment for me. A part of me was still stuck on how I've heard it used in t.v. and movies like "Shakespeare in Love." "Will you be my Muse, Rosaline," says the Shakespeare character. It makes me think she's just going to be his source of inspiration not a source for the story itself.
While reading about the Romantics in another class, I saw how many of the Romantics called upon Nature to flow through them to create poetry. "Make me thy lyre" says Shelley to the Western Wind. I think the idea of beauty and power coming down upon us to work through us really neat and kind of beautiful. It's like in religion how some call upon the Lord to work through them; they're just calling upon the poetic spirit in the sky to swoop down and help us conceive a verse full of truth and its by-product, beauty. I just like it.